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Emily should know better than to fall in love with white boys, even if they are kindred nerd spirits. Her parents are touchy about the whole “we came to New Zealand to give you the best opportunities” thing, and eldest sister Susan had to...

Love Birds, starring acclaimed Golden Globe Award-winning British actress Sally Hawkins and internationally popular comedian, broadcaster and actor Rhys Darby, is a charming, bitter-sweet romantic comedy about what it is to have friends and find true...

Canadian Eskimo Dogs, or Qimmiq, were once indispensible to human life in the arctic. Today, the breed faces extinction. Since 1976, Brian Ladoon has stuck to a promise to maintain a viable breeding colony, battling chronic underfunding, wandering polar...

The Orator (O le Tulafale) is the story of a man, Saili, who wants only to defend the honour of his beloved wife and be at peace with her.  Saili is physically disadvantaged, with no great aspirations or expectations for himself and yet he is...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - Jason Stutter: “Careful with that Axe is inspired by a song written by Pink Floyd. I listened to the song one day on my iPod and the idea for this film just kinda fell into my head. Most of my film concepts are either...

New Educational Series - Canaries in Colour is a nostalgic pastiche of found graphic material from AV learning programs of the 1970s. 

A chance comment gave writer Kate McDermott a new perspective on a commonplace situation and inspired the short film script This Is Her. “The middle-aged man leaves his similarly aged wife for someone 20 years his junior - it’s such a common...

Director’s Notes - Jochen Fitzherbert “Of all the films I’ve written, Bridge is the script that excited me to a degree that inspired me to return to my first passion: the director’s chair. Why the excitement? First and...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT-Adam Strange “Uncle Remus perhaps summed it up best when he reminisced to Brer Rabbit:  ‘’Twas a time when men were more like critters, and critters more like men, and some say things was better that way...

The novel Under the Mountain, by acclaimed New Zealand author Maurice Gee, has been in print since it was first published in 1979. The book has been a much loved classic for generations of younger readers and, in 1982, the story became a scary and hugely...

Better Military Modelling is the second short film in the New Educational Series, an animated series intricately constructed from images sourced from out-dated instruction and education manuals of the 60’s and 70’s. Set in a shifting and...

The Graffiti of Mr Tupaia is based on the Australian short story The Graffiti of Mr Kynyatta by Michael Griffith, adapted for screen by Paul Stanley Ward. We responded to the story of a character, Mr Tupaia, dignified but silent and isolated in his...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - Jason Stutter “We had loads of fun traumatising audiences around the world with “Careful with that Axe”, so we thought... sequel.  ‘Power tool’ plays with the audience’s...

PRODUCTION NOTES Vostok Station began in the summer of 2006. A test film was shot in and around the Auckland region. This was cut together to examine the story, define the shots and understand the required effects. A trip was made to the location of Mt...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT “Charlotte was the winner of New Zealand’s largest short film competition the V Energy 48Hour Film Competition. As the title suggests, films have to be produced in 48 hours. I wrote the script on the...

DIRECTORS’ NOTES - Meihana Durie “This film is based on the true story of Joe Warbrick and the 1888 New Zealand Natives rugby tour of Great Britain. It is a little known yet fascinating account of triumph over adversity. As more clues...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - Daniel Borgman “Lars and Peter is about the distance in understanding between an adult and a child, a father and his young son, and how difficult it can be to bridge that gap especially when dealing with issues...

Writer David Coyle was 18 years old when he wrote Poppy as a student. After discovering the script Director James Cunningham was determined to make it as a CGI short film. Poppy took 15 months to make. A one day shoot occurred at Weta Digital in...

DIRECTOR’S NOTES -David Stubbs “From the start I set myself the task of developing a project about a world I know and people I know. What excited me most about the screenplay was its raw and original emotional power. It’s affecting...

A lush and melancholic mystery that follows a young man on his journey to self-revelation following the disappearance of his girlfriend on New Zealand’s remote West Coast.

DIRECTOR’S NOTES – GRANT MAJOR “Write what you know they say and while I can’t claim to be ‘the man’ in this story these ideas have been knocking around in my head for some time as a collection of un-related visions...

The NZFC financed short film, The Six Dollar Fifty Man, was selected for competition at the most important film festival in the world, the 62nd Festival De Cannes.  It was the second time filmmakers Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland had a short...

As the youngest in the family and the only male, Dylan has drawn the short straw. He suffers in silence and does what he is told. Set on a beautiful summer’s day at the beach, a dark reality unfolds as Dylan finally decides to take charge of his...

After the Waterfall was filmed in and around Piha, a small settlement on Auckland’s wild West Coast, in the North Island of New Zealand, during April and May 2009. A powerful and haunting tale of human resilience, After the Waterfall is the debut...

Director Taika Waititi started developing BOY soon after finishing his award-winning short Two Cars, One Night. It first emerged as a film called Choice and was accepted into the Sundance Writer's Lab in 2005, where Taika workshopped it with script...

Attracting the sympathy of the girl next door and given direction by a local mechanic, the boy starts to glimpse an alternate path for himself. But as the trio spend more time together, the boy’s violent emotions re-emerge, threatening to destroy...

DIRECTOR’S NOTES - David Rittey “On the surface, We The Living is a simple story. Just below the surface however, lie more intangible and complex human emotions. The story manages to touch upon a state of being that can be fleeting and...

When Jeff and Phill Simmonds embarked on making A Very Nice Honeymoon they didn’t know that separate audio recordings of their maternal great grandmother Elizabeth Vella and her daughter Metty Vella talking about the SS Wairarapa disaster existed...

The story is an original idea by writing team Jane Shearer and Steve Ayson. The project was conceived and developed while they were in artist residence at Chateau de La Napoule. Shearer and Ayson previously spent six months at the Maurits Binger Film...

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT - Grant Lahood “For years I’ve been amazed by the sport of competitive woodchopping. This mainstay of A&P shows around New Zealand combines great physical strength and incredible grace to create an...

Randy Cambell is a teenage orphan living with his aunt and uncle on a boring farm at the tip of the South Island of New Zealand. But he is not destined to raise sheep: he has stunts in his blood. Four generations of Cambell men have died in horrific,...

Still have questions about Kōpere Hou - Fresh Shorts Stage One applications? Then this webinar is for you!  Join us for our second live webinar on Thursday 08 October at 5:30pm to ask all your last-minute questions about Whiringa...